Sen. Rand Paul says there should be a ballot recount for presidential election

BOWLING GREEN, Ky.- Senator Rand Paul was in Bowling Green today and said he believes there should be a recount of the ballots for the presidential election. 

He was at Western Kentucky University to talk to students at a book club about his book ‘The Case Against Socialism.’

Here’s what he had to say about the presidential election results.

“I don’t know if there’s fraud but we ought to investigate  If there’s fraud, if there were a million votes cast, maybe in Pennsylvania, absentee, should we not make sure that they are eligible voters? If they were supposed to sign the form, should the form be signed? Should the postmark be checked to see if it was postmarked before the election. We have rules, we should obey the rules. But what I really object to and what is scary to me is that the president, by following through on legally available channels to recount the votes, and he’s not saying ‘recount it is lost by five percent,’ he’s saying ‘recount it I lost by less than one percent for states.’ So I think it’s reasonable to look through it. The other thing that looks terrible, whether it’s fraud or not, but makes Republicans feel like ‘man we got jipped,’ is that he’s ahead all throughout the election. The election ends, he’s still ahead, and then slowly drip by drip they keep finding votes. And they may all be legitimate but you can see how it’s a terrible optic for people on the Republican side to see ‘we won, we won, we won’ and then we’re starting to win less and a little less as more and more huge boxes of votes come in. Maybe they are all legitimate, but let’s make sure they are. And then if Biden wants a legitimate victory, he should be for counting all the votes, if he says he is. Let’s count ’em all and see to check if anyone’s dead.  I mean I just passed legislation on sending checks to dead people. I got it out of the Senate and it still held up in the house. 

He believes that there will be a smooth transition between President Trump and president-elect Biden if the election results are recounted and certified correct.

“I think ultimately so. I think it’s overblown to say ‘oh with four states with less than one percent, the president should immediately not have any legal challenges.’ I mean, some in the media are calling him ‘oh he’s an authoritarian,’ because he wants to recount the votes. Most of the recounts are actually in the law, some of them are automatic, you didn’t even have to request it. I think it’s better for all of us in a really close election to feel better about it, even if you lost, you’ll feel better about it if they do some sampling of the millions of ballots. Make sure that there’s not a lot of dead people or ineligible voters, people voting twice, things like that.”

Paul wants the president to pursue the legality of the results.

“I think we ought to pursue the recounts, the legality of the recounts, but I think also some sampling of the mail-in ballots would be good to reassure people on the losing side that there wasn’t a widespread fraud. See the other side is saying ‘give me proof of it’ and I’m like I don’t have the ballots. How could I tell you if there is or isn’t, I don’t know. But I don’t think anyone knows. There’s a million ballots. Do some 1,000 person samples of those. You could do it in a couple hours, hand look at a 1,000 ballots in one day probably. And have Republicans and Democrats both look at them. And if you had a Republican and a Democrat look at 1,000 randomly chosen ballots, and they all agreed that those were counted properly, I think that’d go a long way of the republicans saying ‘ya know.’ I don’t think they’ll do it, because it sounds like a reasonable thing to do. But if they did that, I think it would be much more acceptable for those on the losing side to say ‘well there wasn’t fraud.’ But instead they say prove that there’s fraud. I don’t have the ability to say look at the ballots I can’t prove there was. But we do know that absentee ballots are at more risk for manipulation than in person ballots. Because they’re mailed in, you didn’t see the person vote, you don’t know who mailed the ballot in.”